Photo: Joachim Specht · Public domainJobs, income and commuting in Bally, PA
For 9% of workers, the job is at home; Pennsylvania has 16%. Bally grades B+ for jobs and income and B for walkability. Only 4% work in Bally itself; outside it, Boyertown draws the most (4%, 5 miles).
Census ACS 2020–24, Census LEHD 2023, EPA Smart Location Database. How the two grades are made
Bally at work: what stands out
Bally’s Jobs & income grade, measure by measure
On income, poverty and job access, Bally is better than 68% of U.S. towns. Job access by car is its strongest input (ahead of 77% of U.S. towns); household income ranks lowest, though still above most U.S. towns ($76,339, U.S. $80,734). It also does well on household income and the poverty rate.
Unemployment (1.2%) is left out: Bally’s labor force is under 1,000, too few workers for a steady figure.
A fairly firm grade. Within the Census margins of error for income and poverty, Bally could be anywhere from B− to A.
55% of the jobs in Bally make or build things
836 jobs are based in Bally.
What kind of work
What it pays
Who does it
Jobs based in Bally, 2013 → 2023: 901 → 836. Big swings can come from how a large employer reports its locations, not only from real openings or closings.
Primary jobs covered by unemployment insurance (not the self-employed). Pay is monthly earnings. LEHD 2023.
Here is what they are, next to the jobs Bally’s own residents hold wherever they work.
Bally fills up on a workday
On a workday 594 residents head out to work, 23 work right here, and 813 people come in from elsewhere.
About 1,500 people are in Bally on a workday afternoon, 18% more than live here.
About as many jobs as working residents (1.35 per resident).
Workday population = residents − those who work elsewhere + those who come in (the Census “commuter-adjusted” method). Residents: Census survey; commuters: LEHD 2023, primary jobs.
Where Bally goes to work
Where Bally clocks in
4% of workers
3% of workers
3% of workersLines run between town centers. The top 10 towns each way; “Everywhere else” is the rest, including other states.
A thicker line means more commuters. Switch between where residents work and where the people who work here live.
Each way, about 27 minutes from Bally
Round trip, about 230 workdays a year: roughly 8.5 full days in the car, bus or train.
Average commute minutes, one way
of Bally workers work from home, vs 16% across Pennsylvania. Their commute is the hallway.
Share of the 579 commuters (the 9% who work from home are left out). Across Pennsylvania: 81% drive alone, 4% take transit; U.S.: 81% and 4%. Census ACS 2020–24.
From the Census survey of workers who don’t work from home.
Miles to work from Bally
Straight-line distance from each worker’s home block to their main job’s block. LEHD 2023.
Every working resident’s trip, home to work, as the crow flies. Roads add to it, so real drives run longer.
Bally is a driving town
On EPA’s walkability index and the share of commuters who walk, bike or take transit, Bally is more walkable than 62% of U.S. towns. How people get to work scores higher than the street layout: 4.0% of commuters walk, bike or take transit, against 8.6% across Pennsylvania, on an EPA index of 6.8.
A firm grade. EPA’s index has no published margin of error; the commuting share comes from a Census survey of 639 workers.
How TownRatings grades walkability →
Transit service: no data. EPA’s transit file has no stops for most of this county (its agencies had not published schedules in the format EPA used in 2020). That is missing data, not a finding that there is no bus or train.
Households without a car (shown, not graded). 5.4% of Bally households have no vehicle (Pennsylvania 10.4%, U.S. 8.4%). 0% of Bally’s commuters take a bus or train.
Bally next to U.S. towns of 900 to 1,700: 909th of 4,866 on jobs and income
| # | Town | People | Household income | Poverty | Unemployment | Work in town | Grade |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Somerset MD | 1,151 | $250K | 1.9% | 2.3% | <1% | A+ |
| 2 | Bellerose NY | 1,169 | $232K | 1.6% | 6.1% | 1% | A+ |
| 3 | Baxter Estates NY | 1,014 | $154K | 1.0% | 3.1% | 1% | A+ |
| … | |||||||
| 9 | Bryn Athyn PA | 1,304 | $143K | 0.3% | 2.6% | 16% | A+ |
| … | |||||||
| 14 | Rose Valley PA | 1,017 | $247K | 2.9% | 1.5% | 1% | A+ |
| … | |||||||
| 30 | Bradford Woods PA | 1,126 | $153K | 1.9% | 1.4% | 2% | A+ |
| … | |||||||
| 907 | Union Township KS | 1,646 | $82K | 4.4% | 4.1% | 2% | B+ |
| 908 | Ellport PA | 1,081 | $75K | 5.7% | 4.2% | 3% | B+ |
| 909 | Bally PA | 1,243 | $76K | 8.6% | 1.2% | 4% | B+ |
| 910 | Center Township IN | 1,453 | $87K | 4.4% | 1.2% | 1% | B+ |
| 911 | Greenbush Township MN | 1,333 | $106K | 8.1% | 2.6% | 1% | B+ |
| … | |||||||
| 4,866 | Oglala SD | 1,071 | $21K | 68.8% | 26.5% | 0% | D− |
Census ACS 2020–24 (income, poverty, unemployment), Census LEHD (work in town), TownRatings Jobs & income grades. Each town links to its Work & commute page.
Ranked on the Jobs & income grade: the towns either side of Bally, the top three, the last and three more from Pennsylvania.
What this data can and can’t tell you
- Two sources, two years. Trips, distances and jobs based here: Census LEHD 2023, primary jobs, where the employer reports them. Income, poverty, unemployment, commute time and how people travel: Census ACS 2020–24 averages.
- Straight lines, older transit. Miles are as the crow flies. EPA’s walkability and transit files use 2017–20 inputs.
Jobs and commuting in Bally: questions
What is the median household income in Bally?
$76,339 (±$11,975) (Census ACS 2020–24), against $77,971 across Pennsylvania and $80,734 nationally.
What is the poverty rate in Bally?
8.6%, against 11.7% across Pennsylvania and 12.5% nationally (Census ACS 2020–24).
How long is the commute from Bally?
27 minutes each way on average, against 26 across Pennsylvania and 26 nationally. 9% of workers work from home.
Where do people who live in Bally work?
4% work in town. The top destinations elsewhere are Boyertown (4%, 5 mi), Allentown (3%, 14 mi), Washington Township (3%, 1 mi) (Census LEHD 2023).
Is Bally walkable?
Bally is more walkable than 62% of U.S. towns (Walkability B): an EPA walkability index of 6.8 out of 20, and 4% of commuters walk, bike or take transit.
Can you get around Bally without a car?
0% of commuters take transit and 5% of households have no car. EPA has no transit data for this county.
Commuter talk
Getting to work from Bally, from the people who make the trip.
More of Bally
Flows, distances and jobs: U.S. Census Bureau, LEHD Origin-Destination Employment Statistics (LODES 8), 2023, primary jobs. Commute time, working from home and working out of state: U.S. Census Bureau, American Community Survey 5-year estimates. Distances are straight lines between home and work; real drives run longer. Walkability index, job access and transit service: U.S. EPA Smart Location Database. The two grades are our own summaries of these figures, not official ratings.